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There was only one decent idea that I had, that of a theme polygon. When I get a chance I'll open up Photoshop to better illustrate this idea, but here's the contents of my session:
Pick your x number of targeted keywords for a well-defined theme. I choose five for an easy example. So now I have a theme pentagon. Let's use CSS as my example theme. The five keywords chosen were CSS basics, CSS tutorials, CSS books, CSS reference, and CSS examples. The hub of this pentagon is a CSS index page.
The difference in this theme pentagon from the pyramid is that the keyword-focused sections only link to the keyword-focused section on either side and the main index page itself. So in this example, I have:
css.domain.com/basics
css.domain.com/tutorials
css.domain.com/books
css.domain.com/reference
css.domain.com/examples
/basics links to index, /tutorials, and /examples
/tutorials links to index, /basics and /books
etc.
Each main subsection also links to one to three off-site, authoratative sources (e.g. W3C, .edu's) so that it isn't a closed circuit.
This spreads the links out, so that they have more weight on the individual pages, and also so that it doesn't look like a giant spam tree.
My example site would also have another pentagon above it, maybe html.domain.com, with the same basic structure, and the similar sub-sections (html.domain.com/tutorials and css.domain.com/tutorials) also link to each other.
Being that I am a novice, this may already be an implemented structure for many people, or it may have been tried and flopped. If it hasn't, though, I think I am going to do some experimenting with it and see what happens...
Think of it this way. Look at how directories are structured like the ODP.
1. Your primary keyword is one of the higher categories, use your home page for the most generic terms to your site
2. If you have large amounst of content, break them up into sections, and provide more focused keywords on the "category home pages"
3. Your category pages, focusing on more exact or technical keywords.
This pyramid, as you say, is effectively like your site "spidering" the keywords of the directory itself.
Ive found this month in Google, which has found many more of my biology tutorial pages, I can get #1 with the keywords used in this third level of navigation.
The second level can usually be found in the top 20 while the home page of the site can be found at #60 from its largest keyword (i.e. biology), coincidentally which is up from #110 last month.
I think its because mainly of all those new deep pages within my site, and the link pop generated from them and external ones.
Just to sum it up, i think your right and it works :)
